[lug] audio questions

[dio2002 at indra.com]

> Moving files outside of the interface can cause a loss of ranking. Saved 
> playlists (in contrast to whatever the active playlist is) are just 
> files and are not stored in the db.  You can also create conditioned 

that's good to know.  however, whether a playlist is saved in a db or 
file, i imagine it's still going to contain filesystem pointers to the 
actual files.  so if the files are reorganized in the filesystem, it's 
going to break the playlist.

  > As amarok has gone through various upgrades, I have lost the db a few
> times.  I keep meaning to write a script to parse the db, pull the 
> rating out and make it a tag in the flac/ogg files, but I haven't made 
> time for it yet.

good idea.

> Once I import music into amarok, it doesn't usually leave, though I do 
> copy files from the master collection out to external devices.  I also 
> don't think of the music as fully processed until I've taken the time to 
> make sure it is tagged the way I want it and put in the directory 
> structure I want.

it sounds like regardless of the sw used, planning the file structure of 
the mp3 collection is a very good idea if you want to avoid later pain. 
  if one wants to change filesystem structure afterwards, it's probably 
best to dupe the collection and work on the dupe, leaving the old one 
intact with associated playlists until you reorganize the way you want 
in the new one. then creating new playlists based off of that and 
switching over. assuming you have the disk space.

walking through this, it seems there's no real ez answer to this.  no 
matter what system you use file pointers are going to break the minute 
you move the underlying file around.  unless of course you use a gui 
based media lib system and move the files in the gui file manager which 
can do the updates for you.